Power Rankings: Golden State Warriors clearly best in West as winning streak rolls through Texas

Stephen Curry and the Warriors have found their groove over the past two weeks.

If the East-West discrepancy in the NBA is cyclical, than this has been a really long cycle.

This will be the 17th time in the last 17 seasons that the Western Conference has had a better record than the Eastern Conference. Last season, it looked like the East had made some progress, winning 48 percent of the games played between the conferences, up from 42 percent in 2014-15 and 37 percent in 2013-14.

But this year, the East has won just 45 percent of interconference games. And with 10 days left in the regular season, the East is in danger of having three playoff teams under .500.

The West, meanwhile, could have all eight playoff teams over .500 after the 8 seed was well under for most of the season. With a 14-3 mark since March 1, the Portland Trail Blazers are 38-38 with four of their final six games at home. Not only does the West have the teams with the three best records, but it has the better depth in its playoff field.

In fact, only one East team that's currently in playoff position has a winning record against the top eight teams in the West. That's the Milwaukee Bucks, who are 8-7, with a game in Oklahoma City on Tuesday.

If the Bucks don't win at OKC tomorrow, no East team currently in playoff position will have a winning record vs. the West's top 8. pic.twitter.com/z5KugiGISD

Of course, when we get to The Finals, it won't matter what happened between the two conferences in the regular season. The Detroit Pistons won the title in 2003-04, the season with the biggest East-West discrepancy in the last 20 years (the West won 63 percent of interconference games).

It would be hard to pick against the Golden State Warriors right now, but we were saying the same thing at this point last year.

This time last year:Last playoff spots still up in the air -- The Jazz were in playoff position and the Rockets were not. The Celtics handed the Warriors their first home loss and the Thunder were having fourth-quarter problems. Kyle Lowry had his elbow drained, Blake Griffin returned from a three-month absence, and a D'Angelo Russell prank on Nick Young went a little too far.

Hero team of the week: Golden State (4-0) -- The Warriors ran their winning streak to 11 games with four wins over top-10 teams, including a sweep of a road back-to-back in Houston and San Antonio.

Zero team of the week: Orlando (0-4) -- The Magic led the Thunder by 21 and the Celtics by 13, but couldn't finish either of them off and capped their week with a loss in Brooklyn on Saturday.

East vs. West: The West is 244-202 (.547) against the East in interconference games after going 9-5 last week. With only four interconference games remaining, this will be the 17th time in the last 18 seasons that the West has had the better record.

Toughest schedules so far: 1. Sacramento, 2. Memphis, 3. L.A. Lakers

Easiest schedules so far: 1. Toronto, 2. Atlanta, 3. Boston

Schedule strength is based on cumulative opponent record, and adjusted for home vs. away and days of rest before a game.

Team to watch this week: Miami -- The Heat are holding on to eighth place by their fingernails and have three tough road games this week, visiting Charlotte on Wednesday, Toronto on Friday, and Washington on Saturday.

The league has averaged 98.8 possessions (per team) per 48 minutes and 106.2 points scored per 100 possessions this season.

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NBA.com's Power Rankings, released every Monday during the season, are just one man's opinion. If you have an issue with the rankings, or have a question or comment for John Schuhmann, send him an e-mail or contact him via Twitter.

We're 77 games into the season, and the Jazz are still shorthanded and their when-healthy starters have still played just 13 games together. But Shelvin Mack stepped up last week (after being out of the rotation for most of the last three months), the scoring was balanced in their three wins (with Rodney Hood and Joe Ingles combining to shoot 22-for-30 from 3-point range), and their defense has remained stifling. Still, after Sunday's loss in San Antonio, they have a lot of work to do to hold onto the 4 seed, and only one of their five remaining games (Friday vs. the Wolves) is against a team currently under .500.

The Wizards began their five-game trip with a win in Cleveland, but ended it with their first three-game losing streak since mid-November. They got chewed apart by the Clippers and Warriors and are set to have a below-average defense for the first time in five years. Only the Grizzlies (7.0 points per 100 possessions) have seen a bigger increase in Defensive Rating since the All-Star break than the Wiz (6.2), who have allowed 111.2 points per 100 possessions since the break after allowing only 105.0 before it. Tuesday's game against Charlotte will be their last against an above-average offense, though.

With J.R. Smith (14-for-25 from 3-point range over the last three games) finally finding his rhythm, there's a little less pressure on the Cavs' defense. But LeBron James played a season-high 52 minutes in Game 76 on Sunday (a double-OT win over Indiana), that defense couldn't stop a fairly simple pin-down action from freeing up Paul George (causing some serious friction between James and Tristan Thompson), and Wednesday's game in Boston (with first place in the East on the line) will be the second game of a back-to-back for the Cavs.

Wins haven't come easy for the Clippers. Even when they scored the first 17 points of the game on Saturday, they allowed the Lakers to come back and take the lead before improving to 18-2 against their arena-mates over the last five years. But the Clips have won three straight and seven of their last nine to stay ahead of the Thunder and remain in the 4-5 matchup in the West. They've scored a 115.7 points per 100 possessions (second only to the Warriors) in that stretch, with Blake Griffin shooting 15-for-33 from 3-point range and leading six guys averaging double-figures over the nine games. But one of the other five is Austin Rivers, who is likely done for the regular season with a hamstring injury. Even though Chris Paul has missed 21 games, he and Rivers have played 242 more minutes together this season (538) than they did last season (296) and the Clippers have outscored their opponents by 11.1 points per 100 possessions in those minutes.

Jusuf Nurkic played the best game of his career in the biggest game of the year, leading the Blazers to a crucial win over his former team with 33 points and 15 rebounds on Tuesday. Nurkic was lost for at least the rest of the regular season with a leg fracture on Thursday, but the Blazers have continued to put distance between themselves and the Nuggets. They've won six straight games, are a league-best 14-3 since March 1, and have reached .500 for the first time since they were 12-12. With Thursday's victory over Houston, they've won five of their last seven games against teams above .500, having been 6-21 against that group previously. With three games left against teams over .500 (Utah and San Antonio) and three against teams below (Minnesota and New Orleans), their magic number (combination of Blazers wins and Nuggets losses) to clinch a playoff spot is four.

The Bucks are 15-4 with Khris Middleton in the starting lineup (though nine of the wins have been within five points in the last five minutes), with quality road wins in Charlotte and Boston last week. But with Malcolm Brogdon out (and Matthew Dellavedova in the starting lineup) over the weekend, their bench struggled (they were outscored by 25 points in 32 minutes with Dellavedova off the floor) against Detroit and Dallas. They lost on Sunday, but remain a game ahead of Atlanta for fifth place in the East (with the Hawks holding the tiebreaker).

It remains remarkable what the Heat have done in the second half of the season, but their 10-21 record without Dion Waiters (with a home loss to the Knicks on Friday) is a reminder of just how small their margin for error has been all season. Four of their last five games have been within two points in the final minute and Hassan Whiteside's buzzer-beating tip-in in Detroit on Tuesday (along with the head-to-head tiebreaker against Indiana) is keeping them in eighth place. But after two straight losses at home, they have to circle the wagons for a big week on the road.

With their season likely on the line in Portland on Tuesday, we saw the Nuggets' poor defense more than their potent offense. Not only did they allow the Blazers to shoot 49 percent (with Jusuf Nurkic getting all 12 of his buckets within five feet of the basket), but the league's fifth best defensive rebounding team also allowed Portland to grab 15 offensive rebounds and register a season-high 27 second-chance points. Sunday's quality win in Miami kept the Nuggets alive, but Danilo Gallinari may have busted out of his shooting slump a little too late and they need help from the Wolves or Jazz this week

The Grizzlies are looking a little like they did at this point last year, with three projected starters - Chandler Parsons, JaMychal Green and Marc Gasol - out all or most of last week. But they got a couple of wins and clinched their seventh straight playoff berth by breaking out of an offensive slump and scoring 113 points per 100 possessions against Indiana and Dallas behind 64 total points from Mike Conley. Brandan Wright has filled in nicely, but in the five games that Gasol has missed over the last eight days, they've been outscored by 25 points in the 55 minutes that Conley has been on the bench. They're almost certainly looking at a first round matchup with the Spurs, who they've beat twice at home and who they'll visit on Tuesday.

The Hawks got Paul Millsap back from an eight-game absence in Brooklyn on Sunday, but he couldn't give their offense much of a lift shooting 4-for-14. They picked up a couple of critical Millsap-less wins earlier in the week, but they've lost to the Nets twice in the last eight days, and now their schedule gets much tougher. With their next four games coming against the top two teams in the East and a team (Charlotte) that has won seven of its last nine games, it's not hard to imagine the East's final playoff spot coming down to their game in Indiana on the last night of the season.

The Mavs will miss the playoffs for just the second time in the last 17 years and will likely rank as a bottom-10 offensive team for the first time since they drafted Dirk Nowitzki. Despite the addition of Harrison Barnes, only three teams have suffered a bigger drop-off in offensive efficiency than the Mavs, who have scored 0.8 fewer points per 100 possessions than they did last season. Among the 31 players who have taken at least 1,000 shots this season, Barnes ranks 26th in true shooting percentage. Wesley Matthews has had a second season of below-average shooting in the wake of his Achilles injury, and it's unclear if this team has a full-time playmaker. But their year of transition will continue with a lottery pick in what appears to be a strong draft.

In the last two weeks, Reggie Jackson went from starter to reserve to inactive for the last four games. Beno Udrih gave the Pistons good back-up minutes against the Nets and Bucks on Thursday and Friday, but the Pistons came one bucket short of getting the win in the more important of those games and are going to miss the playoffs for the seventh time in the last eight years. In fact, because they've been swept by the Cavs in their last two appearances, they're the only Eastern Conference team that hasn't won a playoff game since 2008. Since the All-Star break, they've been outscored by an amazing 36 points per 100 possessions in the first six minutes of the first quarter, as none of their starting lineups have worked.

With Buddy Hield continuing to shoot well, the Kings' other 2016 lottery pick is starting to get some playing time off the bench. For a 19 year old, 7-1 Georgios Papagiannis has looked rather comfortable in the post as he has shot 19-for-30 over his last five games. Dave Joerger is also playing his other young core pieces - Hield, Skal Labissiere and Willie Cauley-Stein - more together, with Labissiere starting the last three games. He has shot well from mid-range (55 percent), but has attempted just five threes in his rookie season.

Tiago Splitter played his first game in more than a year last week, but Jahlil Okafor (knee soreness) and Robert Covington (meniscus tear) joined Jerryd Bayless, Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons on the Sixers' done-for-the-season list. At one point against Brooklyn on Tuesday, they were playing a lineup with Nik Stauskas at point guard and Dario Saric at center. Covington's absence creates a larger role for rookie Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot, who scored a career-high 19 points in Cleveland on Friday and then topped that with 23 in Toronto on Sunday.